


Réclame

by recrudescence



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-15
Updated: 2010-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:40:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't so much that you're a criminal, but you are a very willing accessory to a multitude of crimes. Eames says this is utter bollocks and, of course, he's right. But for the sake of your conscience, you ignore him.</p><p>Inspired by kink meme prompt: <em>Eames' smirk when he says, "There's a man here - Yusuf." Obviously they had a hot fling last time they met.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Réclame

"Give him what he needs," they tell you, pistol to your head, IV to your arm. The latter frightens you more than the former, which is yet another reminder that you've grown far too accustomed to your work here.

"There are better ways to do this," you say, once you're under and your dream has constructed a bunker for you both. Standard scenario for strangers, keeping your thoughts locked as tightly as possible. This is not the first time your private practice has been overturned. Tehran is cold and uncertain and your contacts here won't last much longer, not if they keep slipping your name to people who shouldn't have it.

"According to the enormous goons paying me enormous sums of money? Not so much," he answers easily. This man, who walked through your door with suits and solemnity bracketing him, wears his hair parted sharply on the side and there's a casual slant to his shoulders. "Let's get this over with, shall we?"

There is always want. Desperation and curiosity and some torn seam in someone's psyche that needs to be mended. Most of the time, you manage perfectly well without weaponry being leveled at you. "I don't have all day," you tell him, which is sheer contrariness on your part. You have as much time as they decide. "What's so important that you don't discuss it outside a dream?"

Want. They came to you, a stone-faced trio making demands and taking out an entire wall of your establishment when you pretended not to speak English, and of course there is want. And he tells you, safe within the intact and insulated walls of your subconscious, what that entails. "They say you can make a man forget anything. Even his origins."

Selective amnesia. Waterboarding this person would be kinder, and you say so. He disagrees. "Pain isn't the aim here. We need to extract information, then go a step farther and erase all evidence of it ever being there. He won't remember what he's forgotten. Unless that's beyond your capabilities."

For the right price and the right people, you can make a man do anything. But overambitious amateurs are not your clientele. "Let me see what you can do," you demand, and when you look at him again he's wearing your body the same way he had been wearing his slouch and his neatly combed hair. When he walks, it's with a gait that isn't yours, and when he smirks it looks foreign on your face. It's still some of the best work you've ever seen.

"This is what I can do," he tells you, in your own voice. His hand mirrors yours, sliding into a coat pocket that contains something he can't possibly know about. "Will you help me or not?"

And you do. Their work makes no headlines and you assume that means success. No news is good news.

\---

He materializes again two months later. You're both on a completely different landmass this time, but it's as if he's just popped round for a visit, no trouble at all. He remembers your name and buys you a drink as if nothing's happened. "That compound you gave me," he confides. "It worked."

You sip your pint—the one you bought for yourself, not the one from him—and don't bother being insulted. The tablecloth feels itchy under your abruptly clammy palm. "Of course it worked."

"I need a favour." His voice is low and enticing like well-aged wine.

"Considering the first time you needed one, your friends destroyed my shop? I'm jumping at the chance."

He smiles. "Those weren't friends, they were a means to an end and a first-class plane ticket. They needed me, I needed the money, and so on."

You find it hard to believe someone with his skill set could ever be strapped for cash. He twirls a poker chip between his fingers and you think you start to understand. "Eames," he says, and it takes a moment to realize he's holding out a hand to be shaken. "Come on, then, let's give it another go now that no one's holding you hostage."

You roll your eyes, but you take it. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Eames."

It takes guts to forge someone so shortly after meeting them. It takes genius to make it actually work. Having him on your side, if only until his next contract rolls around, could be wise. That doesn't mean you're about to ingest anything he buys for you or take any job offers he happens to have or trust him as far as you can throw him.

"Those friends of mine you mentioned." His eyes are wide and bright, a child in front of an enormous birthday cake. "I acquired a souvenir of our time together."

This conversation is not going to end well. You obligingly raise your eyebrows anyway.

"Come and see." Quiet, coaxingly, as if this is the most marvelous secret in the world and he can't wait to share it with someone.

"Over my dead body."

"I want to employ you, not murder you."

"Forgive me for having my doubts."

"Would it tip the scales if I mentioned your gorgeous eyes?"

You waver between laughing and dumping your drink in his lap. He's sitting with his hands clasped before him and a look of poorly contained glee on his face, and by the time you decide to be kind and laugh he's already rising. "Right. See you later, then." And he takes something from under the table and begins to walk away, but not before you catch sight of what it is. As planned, no doubt.

Damn him.

"Wait."

He turns on his heel, eyebrows lifted innocently, and he waits.

  


\---

You haven't had a PASIV of your own since leaving Tehran. Eames has borrowed—his words—a flash drive of blueprints to a particular dream world and apparently has more time than he planned on to do some test runs before handing it over for payment. "One of the benefits to getting a job done ahead of schedule," he tells you. Stealing from one extractor for another is not something he makes a habit of, he clarifies, and when he does it it's never face to face, always in some other form. You wonder how many of them he has.

"I need you to help me develop something. Some sort of sedative that will permeate two layers of dreaming for a very particular person."

"How's that?"

"The woman undergoing the extraction is epileptic. Can't have her consciously or subconsciously rebelling and ending it early."

Your mind is already permuting oxcarbazepine. "So maybe what you need is something serving as an anticonvulsant in the first and as a euphoriant in the second, gradually, as you go on"

"To my knowledge, there's no compound on any market tailored quite like that, which is where you come in."

"I never said I was coming in on anything."

"You," Eames says, leaning on his forearms, "are a chemist. Other people call themselves chemists when really they're just pharmacists who try to prescribe the right thing at the right time. You customize."

And then he names a price. It's more than enough to have you setting up business in the country of your choice.

  


\---

The plan is a standard one, or at least Eames narrates it as such: he goes in, pretends to be her late husband, whose brother is convinced she had a hand in his death, and in finding out the brother gets peace of mind or opportunity for revenge or whatever it is Slovakian mobsters do. It's up to the two of you to test-drive your concoction in the model until both the drugs and the dreamscape are as solid as possible, then passing all of it over to Eames's current master for the two of them to undertake the real thing.

You talk. Eames enjoys thinking out loud, and you learn pieces of his past without meaning to.

"I worked with this one lad, real condescending tosser, who would play awful music as a lead-in for a kick. Worked like a charm."

And you find yourself sharing right back.

"I did one job where this posh fraternity wanted to hire a team to put them under so they could dream the most outlandish spring break possible. Recreational dreamsharing. The idiots couldn't keep their mouths shut, so of course the university's president found out."

That makes him laugh, propping his feet on one of the tabletops in the rubbishy flat you're renting as a workspace.

"Do you know firearms at all?" he asks you another time.

"Enough to get by. I prefer syringes."

He makes a small, contemplative noise. "Are you amenable to learning new things?"

Despite your differences, you work well together.

Eames is mostly freelance, taking what suits him and occasionally teaming for extended periods of time. "It's not good to be too independent, you understand," he explains. "When you do what I do, that can make you seem untrustworthy."

"You _are_ untrustworthy."

"You've cut me to the bone, darling."

  


\---

You're between establishments at the moment, so it's a good time to think about where you'd like to put down roots next. What you need is to set up shop somewhere new, somewhere you won't be bothered, and make a semi-honest living. It isn't so much that you're a criminal, but you are a very willing accessory to a multitude of crimes.

Eames says this is utter bollocks and, of course, he's right. But for the sake of your conscience, you ignore him.

And you notice things, like how he smells intoxicating, musky and spicy and entrancing, and always looks so comfortable in his clothes no matter what they are. These are harder to ignore.

In the coolly impersonal room, you sleep side by side until the music plays to wake you. Precise as clockwork. You have enough faith in your new compound and Eames has enough faith in his knowledge of the levels that it isn't necessary for one of you to monitor the other anymore. When you finish, Eames winds up the wires and falls right back into bed, curling against you as you stare at the lumpy wallpaper and allow it.

"What is it?" you ask, because you can feel his eyes on you as acutely as you can feel his arm around you.

"Your teeth. They're perfect." And he's kissing you, warm and sleepy, before dropping his head down onto your chest as he drops into a doze. Later, you'll assume he doesn't remember it at all.

When the two of you work through the night instead of going back to your respective hotel rooms, Eames has no reservations about making himself more presentable after too long playing with the PASIV. You're used to his habit of stretching out on the bed, because the chairs aren't half as comfortable, and passing out afterward, which is one lingering side effect you weren't able to eliminate.

You're used to the way he's so easy with his touches then. You're used to waking yourself to see him cleaning his teeth, combing back his hair, fetching a fresh set of clothes. Used to the way his pants cling to his thighs, the ripple of skin and sinew as he drags his shirt over his head. You aren't used to him catching you at it and grinning right at you, broad and brash.

"Were you looking at my arse?" He sounds far too pleased. "You were, weren't you? _Well_, now."

You're supposed to be hooking yourself up for one last run before signing off and sending your work on its merry way. "I can't go in there," you say, and you think the world is turning in on itself, like it did one time where one of your concoctions couldn't hold together a dream's structure and the whole thing telescoped with you still inside it.

Eames glints. His eyes, his belt buckle, his keen-edged mind, the money and metal constantly passing through his hands. He's a poker chip of a person, bright and ready to be gambled. There is an easy sensuality to him, a flirtatiousness that he uses on everyone without seeming to realize how charming it is. He must, of course, and that troubles you in a way it wouldn't have a month ago, troubles you right up until his mouth is nearly touching yours.

"Yusuf, my dear," he says quietly, "relax.

  


\---

Mombasa is hot and crowded and the air is gritted with dust and pitted with curses and exclamations. Anyone who wants you has to know where to find you because you do so much of your work--contracts and deliveries and tweaking of formulas--through intermediaries that it's hard to track you down. You like the convenience of that. You've come a long way.

He finds you again. You've settled in and he's on holiday, happens to be in the area. Just so happens. You've been keeping his PASIV safe, since he passed it off to you, and his eyes widen when he takes in what you've done with it.

It and a few more.

"You've become a new kind of drug lord," he declares, sounding like he approves. "A dream lord." Then he's smiling at you and asking if you'd fancy a drink.

"You buy, of course," he adds, something he's always been sure to specify ever since you refused to down a drop of that pint he bought for you the first time your paths crossed after Tehran.

And, for quite a while, he stays. He makes himself comfortable, learns the betting scene and the best cafes, and habitually turns up at your flat whenever he cares to. A time or two, you find him in your shop with your cat on his lap, spinning lie after lie to impressionable customers.

Eames tells you things. Nothing terribly technical like his mother's name or his favorite film, but things like the time he spent living in a shithole in Manchester, getting home too late to do anything but eat stale toast and Nutella for dinner and then fall into bed with the hiss of rain and the humid scent of petrichor wafting through the window because he couldn't afford to run the air conditioner. You can imagine it, and you sympathize. Working under the table has its drawbacks until you learn how to find the right tables.

It's easy to get lost in the ruminative tone of his voice. "That was a bastard of a time," he says, on the edge of a sigh, and your eyes follow the contours of his throat when he tips his head back and drains his beer.

You tell him things back, like your time in Riyadh and San Francisco and Kent. You mention your older sister in Glasgow and your younger sister in Jeddah, but never by name. No one but you knows these things.

You tell him about your patients, since that's exactly what they are, people who have become too dependent on dreaming to be called clients. These are addicts who need treatment, and you know that your father would never approve of your kind of mercy.

Once you have someone's health in your hands, your father said, you must do right by it. You never wanted to be a surgeon nearly as much as he wanted you to be one, but you carry that advice with you like a strongbox.

  


\---

He comes to you when the mood strikes him, never seeming to have any trouble hunting you down. When a man can turn into anyone, it's almost impossible to hide from him even if you want to, really. Eames has ways of attaining information that you can't possibly hope to thwart. You realize just how prescient it was when you decided to keep on his good side.

Eames enjoys the occasional cigar, but you shy from anything that could corrupt your olfactory system so you never partake. Watching him exhaling streams of smoke is fine for you. You fill him in on your research and he listens even though you know chemistry bores him to tears. He regales you with stories about his luck at the poker tables and his egregious Swahili. Half-joking over cups of rich, dark coffee. Asking if you can make him a compound that will get him laid in this godawful town.

You've entertained dishonourable thoughts about spiking his tea just to see him sweat and strip and grow hard in his undershorts until he can't take it anymore and has to bring himself off, no matter where you are. Having access to an impressive array of chemicals and top-of-the-line dreaming technology has its advantages.

"It isn't my area of expertise," you inform him.

"Come on, give me a nudge in the right direction. You must have a recommendation or two."

"Also not my area of expertise."

He studies you for a few slow seconds, like he's caught himself in the midst of making a mistake. "Now, are you saying you've never had the pleasure of being inside another man? Or vice versa, for that matter?"

It's a wonder that you're not wearing your mouthful of coffee.

"So you just make a habit of sharing beds and kisses with your male coworkers, then?"

Maybe it was a mistake to underestimate his memory. You don't answer.

"You told me you spent a few years in San Francisco," he explodes, like that explains everything.

"Taking _commissions_," you explode back.

He looks at you sulkily. "Are you certain that's not a metaphor?"

"I think I would know, wouldn't I?" You sniff. "Anyhow, good Catholic boys don't fuck men."

"This Catholic boy got expelled from Catholic school so I'd say it's fair to assume I've lapsed."

That intrigues you, as well as serving as a change of subject. "Expelled for what? Forgery?"

"Please. Writing term papers is child's play and I was a very precocious child. No, I was expelled for making the stupid mistake of shagging a classmate after hours." He wiggles his eyebrows showily. "He was worth it."

So much for changing the subject.

You racked up academic awards and scholarships with ease in school. You always assumed Eames had been a model student, charming anyone and everyone into forgiving his transgressions. "After that, my dad packed me off to set me right. You see how well that turned out." He looks at you. "By the way, I was under the impression good Muslim boys don't drink. Or participate in illegal activities. Or have lives like yours at all."

"That's funny," you say, "because I could swear you're trying to deflect right now."

"From what, the matter of your virtue?" The word makes you wince, and then he goes, "I'm going to graciously allow you the honour of losing the remains of it to me," and you don't think you can force your face to assume another expression without straining something.

"Food for thought, love," he tells you, and pecks you on the cheek and leaves.

  


\---

You keep a framed photo of your family on your bureau. It seems silly to turn it the opposite direction, but you do it anyway, even though Eames is watching. He laughs, a fantastically juvenile titter to go with your own juvenile action, and slips a hand up your shirt and soon between the two of you you're sinning up a storm.

He doesn't ask questions and he doesn't patronize you. Eames is a man with an objective and he won't be distracted. He rolls down onto his own fingers and smiles beatifically when you stare slack-jawed and curse like you're back in uni, and he strokes your face and your chest and your hips and takes you into his mouth while you feel the heavy press of his erection against your leg. This time, his mouth tastes like coffee and cinnamon instead of sleep. He murmurs things that would sound cliché coming from anyone else and you adore him for it just a little.

"I swear, your skin is flawless," he mumbles, pressing kisses into your neck. "I could take you home to my mother and she would interrogate you about your secret for hours."

And you draw you nails against the center of his back because it makes him shiver, which makes you feel ridiculously pleased with yourself. "No talking about mothers."

"Inas is quite a nice name," he says much later, in your bed, in the heat. This time, you shove him in the ribs and tell him not to mention your sister and if he knows any other personal things to keep them to himself. Inas, along with everyone else you're related to, thinks you're the proud owner of a perfectly legitimate pharmacology practice.

He arches, stretching like a well-fed lion, the stubble on his chin flaring dark gold in the afternoon sunlight, and the marks from it on your skin don't feel as strange as you imagined they would. Your imagination has always been guilty of running away now and again, which is something Eames has happily pointed out to you more than once. When you sleep, his arm creeps around you and it's like a post-PASIV hangover all over again, until sunset creeps through the windows.

"I have to see to the dreamers."

He doesn't even open his eyes, so you indulge yourself by memorizing the way the light contours his profile in shades of topaz and tiger's eye. "Ah, your stable? Your guinea pigs?"

"_Patients_," you correct firmly, and go about making yourself as decent as you can.

When you reenter the room, he's finishing the last few buttons on his shirt, looking up at you expectantly. "Right, then, let's go." You can only stare. He heaves a sigh and strides towards the door, foppish shoes and all. "Come on, then. I'll even feed your damned cat while you're off playing mother hen."

Once you have someone's health in your hands, you must do right by it.


End file.
